Character designer Ryoma Ito, from Final Fantasy A2, continues to tells us about the passion of the work he puts into his designs in this exclusive square enix members interview. Here he even comments on the berserker’s racy-ness. This interview can be found here. But to those whom don’t have a square enix members account, the full interview can be found below. Part One of the interview can be read here.

- Did you struggle at all designing the seeq race?
Ryoma Ito: The seeq started as pixel art, and they certainly show a lot of skin. [Laughs] I thought they might be a little too exposed. Especially the berserker. [Laughs]

- The berserker is a little racy, isn’t he.
Ryoma Ito: He is! The only thing he’s covering is his groin. [Laughs] Since we couldn’t touch the graphics at this point, I couldn’t do anything but wonder if we could really get away with it. But [director] Mr. [Yuichi] Murasawa pushed for it, and nothing ended up changing. Making sure their poses covered up as much as possible was a real challenge. [Laughs]

- Of the four gria jobs, which was done first?
Ryoma Ito: The ravager. When deciding how to portray the gria, the first design finished was the ravager.

- Did Mr. Murasawa make any specific requests?
Ryoma Ito: He didn’t for the other races, but for the gria he asked that they be “moe.” [pronounced “mo-eh”] I had a hard time figuring out what exactly that meant. [Laughs] Grasping for a way to explain it, he said it’s sort of like cute, but different. I had a vague idea of what he meant, but I wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted. Coming to a consensus on what exactly it meant was very difficult.

- Ultimately, what things would you say are “moe” about the gria?
Ryoma Ito: Honestly, I don’t know. But since Mr. Murasawa gave his OK, I guess it must be “moe.” [Laughs] Since there were only four jobs, I decided to leave this to Mr. Murasawa. I told myself I’d just redraw them if he didn’t like them, and I submitted them again and again.

I hope you find a character you really like.

- Do you have any favorite race or job?
Ryoma Ito: I really like them all. So the most honest answer is for me not to pick.

- But if you had to pick…
Ryoma Ito: If I were really forced to, I’d pick the chocobo knight. Since they had me make some merchandise related to them, they have a special place in my heart. I’d also pick the flintlock. These are the only two jobs that didn’t start as pixel art. I insisted on having them start with my designs. But since I was able to draw them however I liked, the graphics for the flintlock’s portrait turned into a problem. Its head was much taller than it should have been. [Laughs]

- The hat, you mean.
Ryoma Ito: I based the design on the Royal British Guard, so I thought it would look interesting to see a whole bunch of flintlocks lined up in a row. So when I was working on the design, I had a really great time drawing it. But when I handed it off to the person in charge of doing the portrait graphics, I had to apologize. [Laughs]

- [Laughs]
Ryoma Ito: But they did a great job, and it made me think how wonderful our staff is. [Laughs]

- Are there any secrets you can tell us about the game’s development?
Ryoma Ito: There’s an enemy with a unique portrait. His name is Ghi, and he was supposed to have a different portrait. When I received the design documents for him, I made him the way I wanted to make him. He had a big nose, and he was a parivir with a very distinct character. I thought he looked great. But Mr. Murasawa said I’d gone overboard with it. [Laughs] So that’s how we ended up with the Ghi portrait we have now.

- You hate to see that happen to something you were passionate about.
Ryoma Ito: I thought he was a good character. In my opinion, the version we ended up with is too clean. It looks like he had a nose job. [Laughs]

- What things would you like people to pay special attention to in this game?
Ryoma Ito: It’s not an area I was involved with, but I hope people pay attention to the effects. I do my drawing on paper, so I didn’t have much contact with what went on the actual game screen. So when I see what they’ve done, I’m very impressed. I’m not sure how appropriate it is to praise co-workers in the same company, but seeing what they’d done, I really thought we had some great developers here. Seeing the effects in the opening and the summons, I really admired how far they were able to push the Nintendo DS.

- Do you have a final message for our readers?
Ryoma Ito: I worked as hard as I could drawing each and every character, so even if it’s only one character, I hope you find one you really like. And I hope you’ll have fun playing it for a long time to come.

Source: Square Enix Members NA